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May 28, 2004

Those Nutty Plaintiffs' Lawyers!

In Manhattan this week, two rival plaintiffs' firms battled it out in court. Only one could emerge victorious: it was Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, which won a $1.4 million verdict against rival Mallilo & Grossman.

What happened? According to an account in the New York Law Journal, it was client-stealing by a Mallilo & Grossman associate--

That associate, -------, a 1997 graduate of Touro Law School, went to enormous and ultimately illegal lengths to make a name for himself as a rainmaker . . .

On almost every weekend between March 1998 and May 1999, ----- would call Rosenberg Minc's answering service pretending to be partner Daniel Minc.

He would use the intercepted messages to contact potential clients and get them to sign retainer agreements as quickly as possible.

It was some out-of-the-box lawyering that almost caused the young associate to end up in the can. Ultimately, he was sentenced to three month's probation and disbarred, despite begging for leniency on the grounds of his "inexperience as an attorney" and the "'pressure cooker' atmosphere of Mallilo & Grossman."
UPDATE: The linked article now includes this correction--"The original version of this story incorrectly stated the time frame over which ----- called Rosenberg Minc's answering service. The correct time frame was the first five months of 1999."